60 Egypt

escaped statesmen even a generation later. Nor did he
accept British dictation after this defeat any more than
before. The army was disbanded and the Ottoman fleet
returned, but Alexandria was so fortified that any further
naval coercion was impossible until these defences had
fallen out of date a generation later.

His foreign policy was maintained unchanged. A far-
sighted fear of British intervention prevented any con-
cession of a canal or of a railway. But within four years
of the Palmerstonian bludgeonings he allowed Lieutenant
Waghorn to organise the overland route that reduced the
Indian mail to one month and brought annually fifteen
thousand travellers through Egypt.

Thus the long warfare of the old bashi-bozouk was
accomplished, and it was from no surrender to the blows
of circumstance that he resigned the reins more and more
to Ibrahim, who eventually became Regent (i847)/
For he probably knew that his mind was failing, as
indeed appeared when he proposed to send an expedition
to Marseilles to restore his friend Louis Philippe* He
employed the first leisure of his long life in very human
enjoyments. He laid the foundation -stone of the great
Nile barrage that crowned his reconstruction of the
ancient irrigation system of Egypt, and founded a new
system that was to be completed by his enemies* He re-
visited the scenes of his childhood at Salonica, and made
a ceremonial visit to Constantinople, where he paid a
friendly call on Khosrew. The two old rascals, whose
rivalry had set the East in flames, spent hours together
chuckling over their failures to assassinate one another.

The death of the founder of Egyptian independence

^ The health of the Pasha was first affected in July, 1844,
failed altogether in the autumn of 1847. His mind oegan to go
in the spring of 1848.—Vide Benedetti, Rev. des dtm Monfat 1895